Waikiki Ala Wai Canal: Makes You Sick - Shut Down Public Access?

Waikiki Ala Wai Canal: Makes You Sick

- Shut Down Public Access?

 

http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2013/05/22/19076-ala-wai-canal-if-it-makes-you-sick-why-not-shut-down-public-access/

 

Twain Newhart is about to take off in a one-man kayak on the Ala Wai Canal. He lifts up his leg and points to a black scab.

“It happens all the time,” he says. “It can be bad. It can be really bad. The staph, if it is staph, is the one problem that all paddlers in the Ala Wai face.”

Another paddler displays a deep scar on his hip where an infection had to be drained.
It’s an all too common problem.

Every year, hundreds of canoe racers, from children to adults, paddle out into the murky waters of the Ala Wai Canal even though the water — by the state’s own standards — isn’t safe for recreation.

 

For more than two decades, the canal has regularly failed state and federal water quality standards for recreational bodies of water, limits that are in place to keep people from getting sick.

But there is little if any thought given to banning public use of the Ala Wai Canal and some health officials shrug off their own data on high bacterial counts.

Markus Owens, a spokesman for the city of Honolulu's Department of Environmental Services, says he doesn't think the data is a good indicator of health risks.

But many paddlers say that the health problems in the canal are rife. One paddling coach, who contracted MRSA, a staph infection that can be life threatening, says he advises his paddlers to take preventive antibiotics.

In 2006, a man died from bacterial infections he contracted after he fell in the canal soon after the city had dumped raw sewage into it.

And taxpayers have been forced to pay at least $200,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a surfer who also suffered from life-threatening bacterial infections related to sewage dumping in the canal. She was surfing off Waikiki Beach and was infected after she cut herself on coral.

But some say that the canal's pollution amounts to more of a nuisance than a serious health hazard.
"We don't have bodies lying in the street," said June Harrigan-Lum, a former state health official.

"That is where there would be a serious investigation and enforcement. Yes, people do get infections and they get sick and the infections clear up and not much is done."

Even the paddlers themselves say they’d rather put up with the scabs, boils and rashes then give up their prime recreational site. In fact, they worry that bringing attention to their health problems could prompt the government to shut it down.

“I don’t want to complain because we like using it,” said Rachel Orange, who coaches one of the competitive paddling teams that regularly train on the Ala Wai.